STAGE

In what was billed by Minnesota Gov. Rudy Perpich as “precedent-setting cultural diplomacy,” the Minneapolis-based Children’s Theatre Company has joined forces with the Children’s Art Theatre of Shanghai to produce a play. Plans call for an American playwright to write a play about the impact of China’s Cultural Revolution and reforms on traditional values. It will be produced first at the Children’s Theatre Company in September, 1990, and then at the Shanghai company in November 1990. After the run of the two individual productions, the casts will be integrated for a joint staging, which will tour the Asian Pacific with stops in Gagzhou, Hong Kong, Beijing, Tokyo and T’ai Pei. Both productions will be directed by Jon Cranney, artistic director of the Minneapolis group. The Minneapolis theater group already has a two-year exchange with Moscow’s Central Children’s Theatre, where Cranney is directing “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”